Tag Archives: Women

As a budding poet, Jayson has been writing poetry since 13 years old. His poem, ‘After 70 Days’ about the trapped Chilean miners was featured in York region after he received a letter of thanks from the Chilean president.

THE LIFE OF A REFUGEE

He sees her lying there
Too troubled to rest
Yet too tired to stay awake
The circles around her eyes,
Portray her as a bandit,
Yet she is nothing of the sort.

He sees a tear swelling in her already sad eyes,
Yet he offers no tissue.
He sees a cough shake her violently,
Yet he offers no medicine.

She glances over and watches her daughter,
Her chest rising and falling,
And the rhythmical sound of her snore
She wants to hug her tight,
Let her know she will never leave.

After what seems like eternity,
It is morning,
The birds singing happily
The dew clinging to the grass
And the sun shining!

He watches them walk out

As they watch their breath in front of them,
They walk forward cautious of all eyes,
Fearing that every step could be their last,
Yet savouring the freedom in the air!
All the while petrified of being
caught and sent back.

Should he even question?
What did they do to deserve this?
Why must they live in hiding?
Do they not belong here?
And why would they leave everything they had,

For freedom?

He sits and ponders,
What he takes for granted, they hungrily desire;
his Rights are the stuff their dreams are made of
Stepping forward he opens
His heart and his helping hands.

Bad jobs are making us sick; temporary jobs, jobs without legal protection, and jobs without security. Often referred to as precarious work, or non-standard employment, these include part-time and contract-based, ‘temp agency,’ on call and split shift jobs. Many of these job types have unpredictable work hours, lack standard benefits (such as sick leave) and have little or no extended benefit coverage (i.e. for prescription medicine).

Why is this important to talk about?

There is growing evidence that these types of precarious, non-standard types of employment are on the rise in Canada. A recent report, “Its more than Poverty” found that 40% of employees in the GTA work in precarious jobs. Being sucked into precarious jobs can have damaging health impacts including depression, digestive problems, musculoskeletal ailments, heart disease and diabetes. This is because these types of jobs cause high levels of stress on the economic security and health of families. Research conducted by Access Alliance shows that employment precarity not only affects workers but also the overall household wellbeing, to the extent that their children also feel damaging health impacts.

Income and employment are strong determinants of health. Job insecurity combined with income insecurity means that precariously employed families are at high risk of facing food insecurity, housing insecurity and reduced access to essential services. Research has also shown that children who experience poverty are at higher risk of encountering health problems, developmental delays and behavior disorders. They are also more likely to fall into the poverty trap themselves in adulthood. Not having flexible or predictable employment has further detrimental effects because families have less free time to spend together, impacting positive familial relationships and bonding experiences.

“Not having enough money, not being able to afford healthy food… Does affect me and causes weakness overall in the body… And because of financial insecurity from job and income is not enough so that stresses me… Affects my behavior towards my children and causes conflict and argument with my wife… That gets transferred to children and they also express their tensions in terms of anger…”– Daruun Sharma, Focus Group Participant in “Where are the Good Jobs?”

Daruun Sharma & his wife, like many other new families to Canada have faced difficulty finding meaningful, adequate paying, stable employment, which has made it difficult to afford suitable and flexible childcare arrangements, among other things. One of the most significant barriers for precariously employed parents that prevents them from improving their career situation is the unaffordable and inaccessible childcare. Affordable daycare and childcare for school aged children is vital for all families, but especially with precariously employed parents, since they experience the strongest economic burdens.

In 2012 Ontario had the highest average monthly fees for full-day care centers in all of Canada for both infants and toddlers (Quebec has the most affordable). That means that for precariously employed families with young children, childcare responsibilities can end up being very stressful.

However, in December 2013 the Government of Ontario proposed new legislation to address this in the “Child Care Modernization Act”. The purpose of the act is to distribute a balance between quality, affordability, safety and accessibility. The act proposes a flexible model and has the potential to reduce what parents/families pay in child care fees and subsidy costs for children up to age 6 years by approximately $3,500.

As this Act moves into possible regulation and law, my hope is that precariously employed families are able to access safe and flexible childcare options in their own communities at the right cost. This would help alleviate one barrier to better health and good employment that precariously employed family’s experience and eliminate one more obstacle that bad jobs put in their way.

On March 20th, Access Alliance held the launch of a new report, “Like Wonder Women, Goddesses, and Robots,” which examines the social, occupational and labour market barriers that racialized immigrant women face in Canada. The report, a community-based research project, summarizes key findings and case studies of immigrant women stuck indefinitely in precarious employment. In the majority of cases, the participants were highly skilled, well qualified, and had left behind ambitious careers in their homelands for the promise of a better life. The reality—from the point of immigration—was far from it. Overworked and underpaid in temp, informal or contract work, and swept under the rug from public discourse, their stories bear likeness to one another in the grim consequences; social alienation, insomnia, depression. What the report identifies as the heart of the problem is the “institutionalization of racialized gendering of employment.” So what does this mean?

It means that immigrant women of ethnic minority groups have become widely associated with minimum wage low-skilled jobs. This in turn fuels the discriminatory assumption that they will readily absorb the rise of precarious employment, cushioning the rest of society by taking on work viewed as undesirable by racially dominant groups—babysitting, factory work, fast food services—work once associated with high-schoolers saving up for college has become an unquestioned and normalized view of racialized immigrant women. Despite their rapid swell in the population—over 60 percent of all women in Canada are immigrants, and 3.2 million nation-wide—the consistent lack of voice in labour market issues and policy-making has contributed to marginalizing them. Compared to their male counterparts, who often shed responsibility when it comes to running a household and child-raising, women often struggle alone.

The participants in the report identified three key barriers to stable employment: non-recognition of foreign qualifications, race-based discrimination, and limited access to professional networks. With such powerful structural barriers, it would take major adjustments on a social, occupational and governmental level to correct the system. In an equitable society, a highly skilled, experienced and qualified immigrant would have equal opportunity in career advancement to a local, irrespective of gender, race, or the name printed at the fore of a résumé. Having made huge sacrifices in the migratory process, no person should be cheated out of their dreams, especially those with abilities beyond Wonder-woman, goddesses, and robots.